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Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel
subtitle: A Romantic Novel
201 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
5 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Vita Sackville-West
130 books482 followersNovels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include
The Edwardians
(1930) and
All Passion Spent
(1931).
This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.
She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).
She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.
She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).
She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 9, 2022
Last year when I read a lot of Virginia Woolf, I became curious about the writings of Vita Sackville-West, and after enjoying her short story collection The Heir And Other Stories, I decided I would make her one of my authors to read for 2022.
I picked titles available at Project Gutenberg, and began in January with a poetry collection that I also enjoyed. Then I began on the early novels, and I felt a little bit like VSW was trying to find her voice, her style in these various titles. I had mixed reactions to them all but I did manage to complete two of them. Then I marked one DNF, and now I must do the same with this book.
Grey Wethers is set in a village called King's Avon, where there is a White Horse carved into the chalk cliffs. We begin with the 'scouring', where the young people of the village go up to the horse supposedly to clean it free of vegetation but really to hav dances and games and time to show off for each other and pair up in the process if they wish.
Clare rides her pony up to watch from a distance. She is gentry and has been told to stay away from the common people but she wants to see. While there, an older man shows up to watch also but mostly to blow smoke rings around our way too innocent Clare. He rides away with her before she has a chance to see the broadstick play that she was hoping to watch, and takes her to the Grey Wethers, a group of ring stones. Then he tells her another sob story and forces her to swear on the stone that she will call on him for any help she might ever need.
She doesn't want to swear but she doesn't want him to think she is afraid of the power of the stone so she goes ahead and swears. Well, I think she does, I was so annoyed at her by this point that I quit when she stamped her little foot and said she was not afraid and he should not treat her like a child, that she was nineteen and besides, she does not want to make him unhappy.
Piffle.
I was expecting some sort of slightly spooky tale, a little bit of legend thrown in here and there, and some tragic ending or other. that might actually be there, but I can't stand any more of the plodding along to find it.
I have friends who have enjoyed her better known later works, so someday I might try one of those and see how VSW does with her writing in later years. I also would like to read at least one of her titles about gardening. But for now I will leave her fiction behind, read a biography and a book about Sissinghurst, and then allow Vita to rest in peace.
DNF at around page 50.
I picked titles available at Project Gutenberg, and began in January with a poetry collection that I also enjoyed. Then I began on the early novels, and I felt a little bit like VSW was trying to find her voice, her style in these various titles. I had mixed reactions to them all but I did manage to complete two of them. Then I marked one DNF, and now I must do the same with this book.
Grey Wethers is set in a village called King's Avon, where there is a White Horse carved into the chalk cliffs. We begin with the 'scouring', where the young people of the village go up to the horse supposedly to clean it free of vegetation but really to hav dances and games and time to show off for each other and pair up in the process if they wish.
Clare rides her pony up to watch from a distance. She is gentry and has been told to stay away from the common people but she wants to see. While there, an older man shows up to watch also but mostly to blow smoke rings around our way too innocent Clare. He rides away with her before she has a chance to see the broadstick play that she was hoping to watch, and takes her to the Grey Wethers, a group of ring stones. Then he tells her another sob story and forces her to swear on the stone that she will call on him for any help she might ever need.
She doesn't want to swear but she doesn't want him to think she is afraid of the power of the stone so she goes ahead and swears. Well, I think she does, I was so annoyed at her by this point that I quit when she stamped her little foot and said she was not afraid and he should not treat her like a child, that she was nineteen and besides, she does not want to make him unhappy.
Piffle.
I was expecting some sort of slightly spooky tale, a little bit of legend thrown in here and there, and some tragic ending or other. that might actually be there, but I can't stand any more of the plodding along to find it.
I have friends who have enjoyed her better known later works, so someday I might try one of those and see how VSW does with her writing in later years. I also would like to read at least one of her titles about gardening. But for now I will leave her fiction behind, read a biography and a book about Sissinghurst, and then allow Vita to rest in peace.
DNF at around page 50.
August 21, 2015
Grey Wethers by Vita Sackville-West is a mix of Middlemarch and Wuthering Heights crossed with Far From the Madding Crowd and A Room with a View and has some characters who would have fit nicely into Rebecca and Cold Comfort Farm.
It's a novel filled with not very good descriptions of the wild downs around the small town in which the daughter of a gentleman falls in love with a working man with a peculiar mother who never comes downstairs and a brother who is "simple" but wily. This love can't be allowed, so when an older gentleman (50-something) meets the girl (19) and wants to marry her, well . . .
But the lovers cannot be denied and so one snowy night they disappear together into a blizzard.
Grey Wethers was published in 1923 and was not particularly popular, certainly not compared to Sackville-West's other novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent. I've been reading the new Matthew Dennison biography of the author and wanted to read all of her fiction, but as Grey Wethers was never reprinted and apparently no one has bothered to put it in digital form and it is scarce and therefore expensive. The librarians at the Spokane Public Library got it for me on interlibrary loan and I thank them.
Wethers are sarcen stones.
It's a novel filled with not very good descriptions of the wild downs around the small town in which the daughter of a gentleman falls in love with a working man with a peculiar mother who never comes downstairs and a brother who is "simple" but wily. This love can't be allowed, so when an older gentleman (50-something) meets the girl (19) and wants to marry her, well . . .
But the lovers cannot be denied and so one snowy night they disappear together into a blizzard.
Grey Wethers was published in 1923 and was not particularly popular, certainly not compared to Sackville-West's other novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent. I've been reading the new Matthew Dennison biography of the author and wanted to read all of her fiction, but as Grey Wethers was never reprinted and apparently no one has bothered to put it in digital form and it is scarce and therefore expensive. The librarians at the Spokane Public Library got it for me on interlibrary loan and I thank them.
Wethers are sarcen stones.
January 12, 2025
Trying a bit too hard to be of the gothic era…and a bit too forced.
December 22, 2023
I have previously read some of Vitas later novels, but when I started this one, yesterday I knew something was going wrong. I was bored. I agree with your previous reviewers it’s more like Jane Austen than the mature Vita. When I read about the protagonist riding off with the old man and un-chaperoned, I found that hard to believe. I just happened to stumble on the previous reviews, especially when referring to giving up on page 50 by coincidence, on going back to my book today, that’s exactly how far I got that’s where I’m going to finish. Sorry Vita, but I don’t suppose you would disagree with me it’s certainly not one of your best works.
April 7, 2025
The secene is the tiny village of King’s Avon in England. Nicholas Lovel’s mother has been burnt as a witch and there are rumors that he is involved in the black arts as well. He has a brother whom the villagers are afraid o.
He is friends with young Clare Warrener and they spend time in nature.
Their friendship is slowly evolving into love, but of course, as usual in early 20th century romances, Fate has other plans.
In a well-thought conspiracy, Lovel has to marry a local girl who is pregnant and has to see Clare marry with a 50-year old man.
Well, this plot seems to be fine for that era and is still used nowadays in soap operas, but it just makes the book average and not very enjoyable.
He is friends with young Clare Warrener and they spend time in nature.
Their friendship is slowly evolving into love, but of course, as usual in early 20th century romances, Fate has other plans.
In a well-thought conspiracy, Lovel has to marry a local girl who is pregnant and has to see Clare marry with a 50-year old man.
Well, this plot seems to be fine for that era and is still used nowadays in soap operas, but it just makes the book average and not very enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews